Sandra Gilbert, Leading Scholar Of Feminist Literary Criticism, Examines The Poetry Of Sylvia Plath, February 22

Chestertown, MD, February 15, 2005 — Washington College's Sophie Kerr Committee welcomes Sandra M. Gilbert, professor of English at the University of California-Davis, examining the works of the celebrated twentieth-century American poet, Sylvia Plath, Tuesday, February 22, at 4:30 p.m. in the Sophie Kerr Room, Miller Library. The event is free and open to the public.

A leading scholar in the field of feminist literary criticism, Gilbert is the coauthor, with Susan Gubar, of the groundbreaking work, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the 19th-Century Literary Imagination, and No Man's Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the 20th Century, both from Yale University Press. In addition, she is coeditor of The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women: The Traditions in English and has published seven collections of her own poetry—most recently, Belongings—as well as a memoir, Wrongful Death. Her latest critical work, Death's Door: Modern Dying and the Ways We Grieve, will appear from W.W. Norton in January 2006.

The lecture is sponsored by the Sophie Kerr Committee, which works to carry on the legacy of the late Sophie Kerr, a writer from Denton, MD, whose generosity has done so much to enrich Washington College's literary culture. When she died in 1965, Kerr left the bulk of her estate to the College, specifying that one half of the income from her bequest be awarded every year to the senior showing the most “ability and promise for future fulfillment in the field of literary endeavor” and the other half be used to bring visiting writers to campus, to fund scholarships, and to help defray the costs of student publications.